The Many Faces of the Inmate as a Worker: Artworks of Political Prisoners in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp

Abstract

ABSTRACT The scholarly discussion of artworks created by inmates of Nazi concentration camps has viewed them either as evidence for spiritual resistance or as documentary historical illustrations, thus only rarely examining them using the methods of art history. In contrast, this essay approaches them as artworks, which exceed documentation and cannot be reduced to narratives of resistance. They are analyzed as subjective and symbolic interpretations of the camp experiences. I focus on the recurring figure of a single camp inmate holding a work instrument in artworks produced in the Buchenwald concentration camp. In Buchenwald most artworks were done by political prisoners with a socialist background as well as a rather privileged position in the inmates’ hierarchy. Thus, one might expect them to pre-empt the anti-fascist postwar iconography. But although they used socialist artistic traditions, a closer analysis reveals a striking diversity and ambivalence of artistic expressions. Do these depictions of the inmate as worker express resistance? If yes, why would the figure of the worker be chosen for that role? How do the audience and purpose of the artwork influence the articulated interpretation of the camp and forced labor? In answering these questions, I compare six artworks, place them in relation to iconographic predecessors, and situate the images in debates about artistic traditions.